How Rahul Mishra Cracked GATE To Enter IIT-B

Rahul Kumar Mishra is currently a Researcher at Flytxt Pvt Ltd. He completed his Masters from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 2012. In this post we will see how Rahul Cracked GATE and entered the prestigious IIT Bombay.

Rahul believes 6 months are more than sufficient for cracking GATE. He wrote this exam after being in job for more than two and half year. According to him it doesn’t matters whether you are a working professional or an engineering student. What matters is the amount of time that you can allocate to your studies.

Rahul started his GATE exam preparation by first analyzing the previous years question papers. He analysed the number of questions appearing from each subject in the exam. He also followed the advice by GATE AIR 8. The question paper analysis helped him to shortlist the subjects which are important and the subjects that can be skipped when the time is less.

Some of the subjects which are very essential for scoring high are: Discrete Maths, ToC, Digital Logic, Programming and Data Structures and Algorithms. These subjects should not be skipped. Solving the previous year CS papers helped him cover the entire scoring subjects. Question papers should be solved subject wise.

Rahul gave importance to engineering mathematics which many GATE aspirants ignore. The questions asked from engineering mathematics are pretty straightforward and easy. Most of the aspirants generally ignore this area and that is what becomes the deciding factor for good and great scores.

Choice of the Books

Rahul believes choice of the book differs from person to person. You don’t need to follow any book simply because everyone is following it. You can follow any book that you are comfortable to read and understand. He suggest not to use books like Handa, GK, Genious etc. they are simply a waste of time. Gathering the concepts and knowing the tricks are the best ammunition for cracking GATE. Rahul referred the following books.

Programming & Data Structures: Book by Mark Allen Weiss is good + Relevant stuffs from http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/ is more than enough. Use wiki for any topic. Wiki is a very reliable source for this area.Algorithms: Book by Cormen. + Use wiki for any algorithm. Wiki is a very reliable source for this area.

Databases: Best book He feel is Navathe. Use Raghu Ramakrishna for Transactions & Concurrency control.

Computer Networks:Computer-Networks by Larry-L-Peterson, Bruce-S-Davie as well as book A top-down approach by Kurose & Ross are equivalently good.

Software Engg: I do not know any good resource as I skipped this subject. But I feel, Pankaj Jalote seems to serve the purpose. Web/Html: Internet is the best resource for this. w3schools site for html is good.